Monthly Archives: Oct 2013

As we are approaching the most exciting time of the year, there is a lot of tension in the economy due to 2 weeks of Government shut-down earlier this month due to constant tussle between the congress and the GOP regarding the lift in the debt ceiling, and most importantly, a consistently higher unemployment rate which has lowered the Consumer Confidence quite significantly. In the recent Holiday Forecast by National Retail Federation, the holiday sales are expected to increase by +3.9% to $602.1 billion out of which, $82 billion is predicted to be driven by online channel.

Testing for optimization has been an essential scientific method, but it has its own requisites that have to be taken care of. Testing two variations can solve many confusions in the form of A/B Testing. But there is also the need of testing website properties by varying more than two components at a time, which is referred to as Multivariate Testing or MVT. It is also worth noting that it is simpler to run an A/B Test compared to run an MVT. The ease of setting up an A/B Test makes it a better choice to test major variation changes which can be limited to the variation of two types. In fact, testing of more than two largely disparate variations is also generally referred to as A/B Tests, though they happen to be A/B/“n” Tests. These would be applicable if all the variations are significantly different from each other.

Need for Predictive Analytics
Traditionally, analysts have always mined and studied historical data to diagnose the success and failure factors of businesses and to build best practices for future. In the case of failures, it is impossible to reverse the damage already done which can be at times fatal. However, the best practices did not involve a scientific or systemic planning for the future or to anticipate and be prepared for sudden changes. This leads to confusion on planning and budget allocation tasks. All future steps were based on intuitions, experience and at times random chance hence creating a high probability for errors. The primary reason for the system to not provide such opportunities was due to the lack of robust tools and understanding of concepts.